Cycling Tips & Stories

According to USA Today:

[F]our Dartmouth engineering students have built the GyroBike to make life easier for every kid gripping the handlebars for the first time. The bike uses a smaller, spinning flywheel built into the front wheel, which imparts gyroscopic force to make it more stable for beginners or the physically challenged. The secret of the GyroBike is that the gyroscope means the bike has the stability of one going at 10 mph from just about the moment you push off. Local kids, who volunteered as testers, fell less and learned how to ride much more quickly.

Manufacturer web site. permanent link to article: "The Gyrobike--helps kids learn how to ride"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/30/2007 01:59:00 PM |comment on this article

According to a Springfield News-Leader article:

Outside temperatures may be dipping, but that doesn't mean you have to put your athletic shoes and hiking boots in cold storage.

In the Ozarks, outdoor fitness is a year-round pursuit for even the most senior of citizens. Undaunted by the cold, many people continue their weekly bicycle rides, neighborhood walks, trail hikes and caving.

"Getting outside in the winter is 98 percent mental," said Terry Whaley, a year-round outdoors enthusiast and director of Ozark Greenways. "Once you make that mental decision to cross out that door, you're glad you did it. ... Don't let your mind talk you out of doing it. ... Starting tomorrow is too late."

But shouldn't the cold concern you?

"There's no bad weather, there's just bad clothing," Whaley said.

Read the rest of the article here.

An article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch covers winter clothing for bicycling.

And, of course, IceBike.com has all sorts of well-tested ideas and advice for bicycling in cool to very cold conditions. permanent link to article: "Exercising in cold weather--yes, you can!"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/29/2007 08:01:00 AM |comment on this article

In 1884, Thomas Stevens left San Francisco on a Columbia high-wheeler with the outrageous goal of becoming the first man to ride a bicycle across the United States. When he reached Boston, he decided to continue around the world, and soon sailed to London for the ride across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The high-wheeler was heavy and cumbersome, his supplies were limited to socks, a spare shirt, and a slicker that doubled as tent and bedroll, and much of the country he traversed was wild. Yet he persevered, recording his colorful and often harrowing adventures during the three-year odyssey in a classic of 19th century adventure and travel writing.

The book is available on Amazon.com. NPR has an interview about the book and the journey. permanent link to article: "Story of the first trip around the world on a bicycle--in 1884"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/21/2007 12:15:00 PM |comment on this article

You bet you can . . .

With both snow and ice inches thick in Missouri this weekend, it's a great time to mention the IceBike web site. Bicycling in winter can not only be safe and warm, but a heckuva lot of fun.
permanent link to article: "Can you still bicycle in winter? In the snow?"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/20/2007 09:20:00 PM |comment on this article

Art Garfunkel walked across America:

The Walk is conducted in pick-up-where-you-left-off spurts of approximately one week and 100 miles. Every four months or so, Art flies from his Manhattan apartment and continues his walk through the back roads of America. The original plan was to walk a relatively straight line between New York and Oregon, "but evolved into a free-form squiggle." His footsteps "are plotted on a Rand McNally map that fills a wall of his third floor study." Within 24 hours of his decision in 1984 to walk from the East Coast to the West Coast, Art packed a small backpack and began his trek through Central Park, across the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey.

See his route here. permanent link to article: "Art Garfunkel walks across America"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/20/2007 09:16:00 PM |comment on this article

A recent article by Jim McCarthy in Rural Missouri Magazine featured many of the trails developed by the Green Hills Trails Association in the area around Chillicothe:

Doug coined a term for the Green Hills Region: “The Nozarks.” These pockets of steep, heavily forested hillsides are more Ozark hills and hollers than north Missouri farmland.

It was Tim Riekena, a member of the group and a teacher at Chillicothe Middle School, who really started the effort to put north Missouri’s trails on the map. An avid outdoorsman, he wrote a series of trail columns for the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune, focusing on a radius 20 to 30 miles around Chillicothe.

“I was trying to find what was close, places where I could ride and hike,” he says. “In most books, 80 percent of what they covered was south of the Missouri River in the Ozarks. While the Ozarks are beautiful, they are just too far away.”

In time, readers started encouraging Tim to write a book. He expanded his coverage to anywhere north of the Missouri River and was amazed at what he found. Little-known trails crisscross the northern half of Missouri in state parks, city parks, Corps of Engineers land and remote Conservation Department wildlife areas.

permanent link to article: "Green Hills trails featured in Rural Missouri Magazine"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/19/2007 08:47:00 AM |comment on this article

Just a reminder that the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation's annual swap meet is coming up Sunday, January 28th.

If you are interested in selling/vending, the deadline for vendor sign-up is Jan 17th.

More info about the swap meet is on the STL Bike Fed's web site.

The STL BikeFed's swap meet is one of the best swap meets in the region--I've got a nice pair of shoes I picked up at the swap meet two years ago for an unbelievable price. Well worth your while to visit!

STL Bike Fed's Karen Karabell says that vendors have already signed up from Alabama, Iowa, Wisconsin and Colorado,as well as many from Missouri & Illinois, of course.

5th annual Bicycle Swap Meet and Classic Bike Show

Sunday, January 28th, 2007, Noon to 3:30PM

Gateway Center, One Gateway Drive, Collinsville, IL 62234
(just 12 minutes from the Arch by car)

Individuals! Bike shops! Non-profits!

Buy bikes and anything bicycle-related at great prices. Area bike shops and individual sellers will be at this event.

* Admission is $5.50 for adults, free to children 12 and under. (Price includes 50 cent ticketing fee for Gateway Center.) Free to St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation members. (Membership is $25 ($40 families), available at the door.)

* Early Bird Special: $10.50 will get you in the door at 10:30AM (Price includes 50 cent ticketing fee for Gateway Center.)

* Classic Bike Show: $5 to enter a bike (in addition to admission). Contact Dan Schmitz at (636) 271-2600 or dan@stlmusclebikes.com or Mark Lazzareschi at (636) 391-3832 or bicyclelegends@aol.com.

* Bike vendors of all kinds-shops and individuals

* Non-profits

* New this year - Programming!

* Fun activities and food

* For more information or to sign up for a booth,

call 314-707-5001 or email swapmeet@stlbikefed.org


All proceeds directly support the advocacy projects of the st.louis regional bicycle federation.
Representing a wide spectrum of cyclists including recreational riders, commuters, club riders, racers,
mountain bikers, people who ride the Katy Trail, and people who bike for a living, the bike fed is a nonprofit
group sharing a vision of a bike-friendly region covering the counties of Franklin, Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe, St. Charles, St. Clair, and St. Louis and the City of St. Louis.

permanent link to article: "STL Bike Fed swap meet January 28th, 2007"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/14/2007 10:35:00 PM |comment on this article

Kansas City's own CommuterDude--Keith Gates--was recently featured in Bicycling Magazine:

Nine years ago, Keith Gates took up cycling because of a guitar. "I threw the strap over my shoulder, looked down and couldn't see the strings," says the 34-year-old systems analyst from Olathe, Kansas, who weighed 245 pounds at the time. "I started Weight Watchers the next week." He also started riding on weekends--once around the block at first, then on a local rec trail. Before long, "weekends just weren't enough," Gates says, so he began riding to work a couple times a week. "Eventually, I realized I hadn't filled my car with gas in three months." The Commuter Dude was born.

Today Gates, who has lost nearly 100 pounds, commutes 22 miles round-trip and is on a mission to help others do the same--by dishing out advice and shooting down excuses at his website, www.commuterdude.com.

permanent link to article: "CommuterDude featured in Bicycling Mag"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/08/2007 01:07:00 PM |comment on this article